Pages from the Archives of Cîr Imladris by Lferion

Cîr.Im-AE:192-b | Prologue to 'On Guest-Right'

Written for the Silmarillion Writer's Guild January 2021 Resolutions challenge:
The bonus prompt for January 2 for the New Year's Resolution challenge comes from our Laws & Customs challenge from this past June:

"‘Who’s that? Be off! You can’t come in. Can’t you read the notice: No admittance between sundown and sunrise?
‘Of course we can’t read the notice in the dark,’ Sam shouted back. ‘And if hobbits in the Shire are to be kept out in the wet on a night like this, I’ll tear down your notice when I find it.’"
~ The Return of the King, “The Scouring of the Shire”

Double-drabble text, double-drabble commentary, not counting the headers.

Text of Cîr.Im-AE:192-b

Another difference in the customs of the Noldor, the Sindar, the Iathrim, the Dwarves, and the various Houses of Edain: the manner and force of what might be called guest-right. Against whom may the gates be closed? Under what circumstances is the door to be opened no matter other exigencies? Are the daylight hours more welcoming than those of the Moon and Stars? (The Elven kindreds mark no difference between day and night regarding this, though those settlements and strongholds closer to peril will be more watchful during the hours fell things are more likely to move, it is also then that a traveller's need may be greater. Whereas Med hold night and day to be very different, and entrance after twilight or dawn requires pressing need indeed.) How long is a known person welcome? An unknown or one asking asylum? What may a guest expect beyond a roof, water, warmth, and at least one meal? Is return of some kind expected, the offer welcomed, or the opposite?

All these questions and more must be considered when working on behalf of the High King, or any other lord. Insult, negligence, ignorance or other lack will not serve messenger nor ambassador.

Archivist's Note:

This text is a single page from what was apparently a longer document, not the one it was found in: interesting though that volume is, guest-right is not its subject. Nor is there a match between the paper, ink, style, or the writer's hand. The page is finely finished vellum, thin and supple, the ink pure carbon-black. The writing style is a synthesis of Quenya syntax and formal Northern Sindarin vocabulary, indicating a composition date not long after contact was made with Doriath, the writer clearly Noldor. The hand is clear, precise and elegant — a copybook example of Pre-Darkening Tengwar.

I suspect Caranthir may have written this. One hopes the document it prefaces has also survived, either the original or a copy. Very little of Caranthir’s work has come down to us, unfortunately, but his contacts and interactions with Dwarves and Men form an important part of our relationships with those peoples even now (year 537 of the Third Age): as much or more than those of the lord Finrod, especially as regards the more northerly folk. I shall keep looking.

(V-142, summer) I found it! The original even — bound between two chapters of IL3824-c22 [Penmithel’s ‘Divers Arts’ copy 22].